


Forever Changed

by tryptophan



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Catholicism - Freeform, Gen, Literary Allusions, Parent-Child Relationship, References to Sex, inside Frank's head, or something, references to violence, structure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:45:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8161024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryptophan/pseuds/tryptophan
Summary: How did The Punisher come to be? Glimpses of the major events that shaped Frank Castle into the feared menace of the dark underbelly.





	

Frank Castle cradled the broken body of his firstborn child in his arms, a perverse pieta in Central Park. Not a faultless mother whose child died for the sin of the world, but a fractured father whose child died because of the sin of the world. He bent over what was left of her head and placed a delicate kiss on her forehead as he had thousands of times before, breathing in instinctively to catch the scent of her hair and her favorite strawberry shampoo. Instead he was met with the smell of blood, brain tissue, bone, and a trace of gunpowder, a smell forevermore to be associated with his beloved Lisa.

~

Frank and Maria were fifteen when they met in freshman English, he feigning disinterest in the poetry unit, she taken with all the pretty sentiments. He was sullen and withdrawn, she was light and grace and just a touch of the ruthlessness high school girls need to survive.

She laughed, not meanly, when he wrote a poem for her. After that, he stuck to memorizing verse for her. “The Lamb,” by William Blake, wasn’t proper poetry for wooing a girl, but it was her favorite. When they had their first child, he recited it to their daughter, even if he’d given up on God by then. Maybe he felt God was cruel and capricious, but someone put light into that little baby. It sure didn’t come from out of his darkness.

~

Christened Francis David Castiglione, later amended to Castle, he was only ever called Frank. No little boy wanted to be Francis, and so he wasn’t. The Sisters who taught at his elementary school were the only ones who got away with calling him Francis, but that was only because they were scarier than both God and his father when he’d been naughty for his mother.

  
“What should we name the baby?” Maria mumbled, sleepy and relaxed from a post-coital high and pregnancy hormones coursing through her body. The child wasn’t planned. They were both so young, but the child was wanted, and there was never any question what they would do. Her family pressured her to give it up for adoption. His friends told him to abort or run. His family wanted to know if it was his, and when he vehemently defended Maria’s honor, pressured him to propose to her and “find a damn job.”

Frank made a noncommittal noise. “Joseph,” he suggested.

Maria, propped up on one elbow, traced a pattern with her fingertip over his heart. “If it’s a boy, I think we should name it after you.”

“No. I will not do that to an innocent little baby. Name him ‘Francis.’” Frank’s mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste.

“Frank, then” Maria countered.

“Frank’s a nickname. You can’t just name a child a nickname," he stated.

“Sure you can. Besides, it’s more modern,” she reasoned.

“Well, what if it’s a girl. We gonna name it ‘Maria,’ after you?”

“No one passes down the mother’s name.”

“It’d be more modern,” he teased back.

Maria poked him in the side, on his ticklish spot. “Maria’s too common. Little Italian girls named Maria are a dime a dozen.”

“Well, how after your middle name? Elizabeth Castle.  Sounds dignified.” He ran a finger down her neck, eliciting a shiver and a giggle.

“Sounds like a mouthful,” she replied.

“Lisa,” he pronounced after a moment’s thought. “If we can name a boy Frank, we can name a girl Lisa. And Lisa’s more of a proper name than Frank.”

~

When they married, they offered Maria papers to change her surname, which she accepted. He asked if he could change his name, too, and so they gave him papers for a legal name change. God might know him as Francis David (Joseph) Castiglione, but henceforth, the world would know him as Frank Castle.

~

When the press picked up on his efforts to stamp out the dark underbelly of the city, they christened him “The Punisher.” He never had a choice in the name, no more than that pain in his ass Red had a choice in being “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.” Like Red, though, he accepted that he would be known to everyone else as “The Punisher.”

~

He didn’t enlist right out of high school like some of the boys in his class, but once it became apparent that babies cost a lot of money and he didn’t want to stock shelves for the rest of his life, he decided to follow in his old man’s footsteps. He found the nearest USMC recruiting center, and afterwards went back to Maria to face the music.

She was unhappy that he’d be away so much, and she feared for his life, going off to fight half the world away. He assured her, with all the bravado and delusion of immortality granted by youth, that he’d be fine, he’d never abandon her, and he’d always protect her. He kept one, maybe two, of those promises.

~

He soon proved himself good at the ugly side of fighting, and then-Major Schoonover saw something in him that he liked. He had Frank trained up as a sniper, but made sure he was cross-trained, and made damn sure he was proficient in close-quarters combat. Frank knew exactly where to put the blade of his Ka-Bar, a skill that would serve him well in his second career.

~

He hadn’t touched a woman since Maria was murdered, and he said he never would again. He wasn’t married anymore; those vows said “’til death do us ‘part.” Death had done them apart, but his heart was still Maria’s, yes, absolutely, he swore.

~

He dreamt of a woman with long, blonde hair and blue eyes as cold and hard as her will. He woke covered in a dream of ~~Karen~~ Maria, his own sweat and semen. The cold shower followed by hot coffee effaced all three.

~

It was all upside down and backwards. The Devil didn’t take him to the top of a mountain and promise him the world if he knelt before him. He took the Devil to the top of a tenement and made him dance to his tune.  The Devil had pretty words (not poetry, though), which was right and fitting, but the Devil was also Catholic, which was hilarious, and maybe also right and fitting. The Devil spoke of the light in people’s souls, begged Frank not to extinguish the light that Col. Schoonover taught him how to snuff out with such ruthless efficiency. He gave the Devil the choice between a sin of commission and omission, and the Devil chose omission and then flagellated himself for it.

Frank slept soundly that night, until he woke in a cold sweat, a half-remembered dream of calliope music and demonic horses interrupting the sleep of the just.

~

The boy came later. Maria made good on her promise to name him after his father, or at least his father’s adopted name. Frank loved him no less than he loved Lisa, but Lisa was the apple of his eye. When he felt he was going to cross a line, he thought of what Lisa might think of it, and he pulled himself back.

Once she was gone, nothing held him back.

~

The Devil might’ve been one bad day away from being him, but maybe he was a few good days, or different days, or changed by a hair days away from being the Devil. Did it cut both ways? Did He who made the Lamb make him?

~ 

It all changed with the birth.  He held his newborn daughter, red and wrinkled, puffy-eyed and perfect, in his arms.  In a flash, he saw her grow and gain nothing but scars from life. He saw her learn that her parents weren’t perfect. He saw her learn the truth about Santa Claus. He saw her suffer disappointments. He saw boys break her heart. He saw her children break her heart. He saw her grow old and sick and die. And then he saw his faith in God die. How could any loving God create this perfect, innocent being, only to hurt it and kill it? He couldn’t abide by any God. He could reject the world or God, and since the world contained his daughter, he’d reject God.

~

 

And so it all changed

  


and they placed the baby in his arms

(and the pistol was in his hand)

 

              and in his unworthy hands he held life

 

and he bent down to place a delicate kiss on her forehead

(and he pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the man’s forehead)

 

              and he inhaled deeply

 

and he smelled the scent of his newborn’s head, unique in all of the universe

(and he smelled the scent of blood and brain and bone and a trace of gunpowder, a scent forever associated with Lisa)

 

              and he lost is faith in God

 

for how could something so pure and innocent

(for how could something so perverse and corrupt)

 

              be allowed to exist in this fallen world

 

and he saw the birth of his child

(and he saw the birth of The Punisher)

             

              and knew he would be forever changed.

**Author's Note:**

> Allusions to "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," both by William Blake.


End file.
